During the endless summer that was 'Irish football - 1988-1994', the relationship between the Irish players, the press, and photographers was, with one notable exception, generally characterised by relentless, backslapping bonhomie.
You get a sense of that giddy cheerfulness just by looking at this iconic image of Steve Staunton cheerfully posing by the pool during USA 94.
Usually, when sports stars are photographed reading (its a niche genre) they are leafing through a copy of either Shoot Magazine or Four Four Two in which they themselves are the focus of a double spread interview.
Not here.
For Steve Staunton appears to be reading Joe Maginnis' 1983 bestseller 'Fatal Vision', the true and exceedingly controversial story of Jeffrey MacDonald who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and his two young daughters.
The book remains contentious because during Maginnis' interviews with the then on-trial MacDonald, he appeared to convince his subject of his belief in his innocence. He did so so that MacDonald would continue to facilitate his writing of the book. However, after MacDonald's conviction and on the book's publication, he announced that he had become convinced of his guilt at an early stage.
MacDonald sued the author and to this day is still trying to prove his innocence. Last year, filmmaker Errol Morris wrote a book arguing that MacDonald is indeed innocent. The book remains the subject of debate in the area of journalistic ethics.
We don't know whether Steve Staunton knew the complicated legal history of the book when he posed reading it by that pool. We're not sure whether this was the ideal reading material while a World Cup was in progress.
Certainly, what we do know is that Irish footballer photo-shoots have travelled in a more lowbrow direction in the intervening years.
Here's the original 1983 copy...
